Photo by Jim Jung. All rights reserved.

Spring Beauties

Assuming the weather is cooperative, the first blooming of Spring Beauties (Claytonia virginica) can sometimes be found in sheltered valleys facing southwest. By the middle of the next month most of the forests in our area will have their floors carpeted with their blooms.

Strangely, science has neglected (somewhat) the pollinators of our native wildflowers. This is partly due to the compartmentalization of biology (botanists don't work with insects/entomologists ignore plants) and partly due to overlooking the importance of pollinators in the general ecological scheme of things - but this situation is changing. Our Spring Beauties seem (from my amateur perspective) to be pollinated by several species of small solitary bees - early spring risers all! - who depend on the pollen from these first blooms of spring to provision their nests, as well as the occasional bumblebee. Needless to say, much more work remains to be done in this area.

While I don't find the small white flowers with the pink pastel veins particularly attractive, your web-mistress Ruby certainly does. What I do find interesting about this plant is its persistence. Short of herbicide applications or paving over a clump, they will return each spring without human assistance for at least 150 years - or about the length of time that our town has existed on this spot.

There are still a few scattered areas about town - principally the original town cemetery and a few old homesteads and all thoroughly surrounded by 21st century urban sprawl - that have remained undisturbed for all that time. Here I find Spring Beauties as thick as they must have been when the town was founded.

While Spring Beauties are tough and persistent plants they don't respond well to flower picking. Bouquets of Spring Beauties wilt quickly, even when dunked in water just after picking, and refuse to revive. Also repeated picking of the stems and leaves will eventually kill the corm they rise from. So when on a spring hike leave the Spring Beauties (as well as the rest of our woodland wildflower species) alone and enjoy them where they belong - in the woods.

Spring Beauties rise from fat corms buried several inches underground. The corms send up weak, watery stems laden with flower buds, as well as weak watery leaves. Both the leaves and starchy corms are edible and were once used as food by the aboriginal and pioneer inhabitants of the region. I suspect that the Indians unintentionally cultivated this species since it thrives on mild soil disturbance. [Ed. Note: I've noticed that plants in urban gardens - while they grow and thrive - seldom spread at all as they do in their more disturbed woodland environment.] Digging the corms - and thereby disturbing the soil - creates a perfect seedbed for seedling plants and breaks off corm offsets which can then grow without competition. Squirrels, chipmunks and other forest inhabitants do the same thing as they forage for this important woodland food source thereby ensuring an abundant forage crop in the future.

Offsite Links:

• Spring Beauties from Northern Iowa
• USDA-NRCS Plants Database

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